Curiosity Rover Takes Longest Drive on Mars Yet

Below:

Next story in Space

NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has made its longest Martian drive
yet as it trucks along on the Red Planet.

Curiosity performed its longest one-day drive on Sept. 5,
putting it within striking distance of an interesting patch of
rocks called Waypoint 1, NASA officials said in a mission update
today (Sept. 10). Arriving at Waypoint 1 will place the rover
about one-fifth of the way to its ultimate destination: a
3-mile-high (5 kilometers) mountain dubbed Mount Sharp.

During the long drive, Curiosity traversed 464 feet (141.5
meters) to the top of Panorama Point where it took photos of the
pale outcrop that is Waypoint 1. As of Monday (Sept. 9), the
car-sized rover was about 245 feet (75 m) away from the
checkpoint, according to NASA officials. [ See
the latest Mars photos by the Curiosity rover ]

"We had a long and unobstructed view of the hill we needed to
climb, which would provide an overlook of the first major
waypoint on our trek to Mount Sharp," said rover mission planner
Jeff Biesiadecki, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in
Pasadena, Calif., in a statement. "We were able to extend the
drive well beyond what we could see by enabling the rover's
onboard hazard avoidance system."

A NASA spacecraft in orbit around the Red Planet helped to map
out Curiosity's approximately 5.3-mile (8.6 km) path to Mount
Sharp. Scientists used imagery collected by the
Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter to choose Waypoint 1 as a target
for Curiosity. Once the rover reaches the milestone it will pause
for a few days to sample the area with its arm, NASA officials
explained.

Scientists want to sample the waypoints Curiosity comes across
during its journey to put together a map of the Martian
environment.

"We want to know how the rocks at Yellowknife Bay are related to
what we'll see at Mount Sharp," Curiosity's project scientist
John Grotzinger, of the California Institute of Technology, said
in a statement. "That's what we intend to get from the waypoints
between them. We'll use them to stitch together a timeline —
which layers are older, which are younger."

In an earlier drive this summer, the 1-ton Curiosity rover got to
use its own navigation system to traverse an area not vetted by
its handlers back on Earth beforehand. The rover used its
autonomous navigation system to drive about 33 feet (10 m)
out of its 141 foot (43 m) for the trip.

NASA's $2.5 billion Curiosity rover landed inside the vast Gale
Crater on Mars in August 2012 to determine if the planet could
have ever been habitable for microbial life in its past. In March
of this year, scientists announced that an area near the landing
site called Yellowknife Bay was capable of supporting microbial
life billions of years in the past.